I was never really a cream cheese kind of person.

Even before I was vegan, I wasn’t the person piling cream cheese onto a bagel. Give me butter and jam and I was perfectly happy. So for a long time, I never thought of cream cheese as one of those foundational ingredients I needed to recreate in my kitchen.

And then I wanted to make cheesecake.

Suddenly, I understood why cream cheese mattered.

Cheesecake has taken so many beautiful forms over the years—from the tall, dense New York-style cheesecakes to softer, creamier versions, and eventually to the gloriously dark and wobbly Burnt Basque Cheesecake that became one of my own recipe-development obsessions. Cream cheese became such an important ingredient in American-style cheesecake that if I wanted to make a truly traditional version without dairy, I needed something that could do more than simply taste acceptable spread on toast.

In my earlier vegan days, I made what we often called raw cheesecakes, using a thick cream made primarily from cashews. They were delicious. I still love them. But they were their own wonderful thing rather than the traditional cheesecake I was trying to recreate.

That sent me looking at vegan cream cheeses.

I tried different brands and kept coming to the same conclusion: I didn’t particularly like the flavor, I often didn’t like the ingredients, and making one cheesecake could require three or four expensive little tubs. By the time I had enough cream cheese to fill one cake, I could easily have an extraordinarily expensive dessert sitting on my counter.

That didn’t make much sense to me.

So, as happens rather often in the Sol Canyon Kitchen, I decided I would make my own.

At first I thought I was developing one cream cheese. It didn’t take long to realize I actually needed more than one.

The cream cheese I want to spread across warm sourdough has a very different job from the cream cheese I need to hold together a cheesecake. Baking is science. When I’m developing a baking ingredient, I’m constantly asking questions: What is the cream cheese actually doing here? Where is the structure coming from? What is providing the fat? What creates the creaminess? What happens when all of this gets hot?

A breakfast cream cheese doesn’t have to answer nearly as many questions. It just has to be delicious.

And so this recipe eventually became Vegan Cream Cheese, Three Ways.

The Classic Baking Cream Cheese took the most work. There were versions that performed well but didn’t taste quite right, and others that tasted wonderful but didn’t have the structure I wanted. Eventually I found the combination I was looking for: fresh soy curds for structure and protein, cashews for creamy body and richness, vegan butter for fat and firmness, and just enough lemon to bring in that familiar cream-cheese tang.

This is the one I reach for when cream cheese has a real job to do—cheesecakes, fillings, baked desserts, and all the recipes where replacing an ingredient means understanding its purpose rather than simply swapping one thing for another.

The Cashew–Miso Cream Cheese came much more easily. This is the quick one: creamy cashews, a little acidity, and white miso bringing that wonderful fermented umami note in the background. It can be made without waiting for anything to culture, and it gives me exactly what I want when breakfast is calling.

Then my adventures in cultured butter changed things again.

Once cultured cashew milk became part of my kitchen, it seemed almost impossible not to turn it into cream cheese. And that gave me the third version: Cultured Cashew Cream Cheese. The cultured milk begins the transformation, a little additional culture encourages it along, and then time becomes one of the ingredients. A second fermentation allows the entire batch to develop that lovely tang naturally.

As long as I have cultured cashew milk ready, this is probably the version you’ll find in my refrigerator.

And perhaps none of this would work quite as beautifully without the cashew.

If there is one nut that has earned permanent residency in my plant-based kitchen, it is the cashew. Raw cashews blend into something extraordinarily creamy without bringing along a strong flavor that has to be hidden. They can become milk, cream, ice cream, cheese, sauces, fillings and desserts. Macadamias are wonderfully rich too, and almonds have their own beautiful qualities, but cashews occupy a special place for me.

Cashew milk is kitchen gold.

That neutrality is exactly what makes cashews so valuable when recreating traditional foods. They don’t demand that the finished dish taste like cashews. They seem quite content to disappear into whatever you are making, leaving their beautiful creaminess behind.

And these cream cheeses can travel in plenty of directions beyond cheesecake and bagels. Spread them onto sourdough and pile on strawberries or spoon over rhubarb jam. Serve them with roasted grapes. Tuck them into pastries. Swirl a spoonful through a creamy pasta sauce. Spread one beneath roasted vegetables on toast. Add herbs and scallions for a savory spread. Spoon it onto a baked potato. Use it as the creamy layer beneath tomatoes, cucumbers, or whatever the garden happens to be giving you.

That is what I love most about developing foundational recipes.

Every time I get one right, my plant-based kitchen becomes a little bigger.

I’m not interested in making food delicious despite being plant-based. I want the foods I remember and love to remain recognizable—to preserve what made them wonderful in the first place while finding another way to create them. Authentic. Traditional when tradition matters. Abundant. Luxurious. And entirely made from plants.

I never particularly set out to become a recipe developer. I simply wanted delicious food on my plate, and when I couldn’t find the recipe or ingredient I was looking for, determination usually sent me into the kitchen to figure it out myself.

So here is another tip of my hat to a Sol Canyon Kitchen foundational recipe.

Three cream cheeses. One for baking. One when I want something wonderful right now. And one for those days when I’m willing to let fermentation and time make it even better.

I can happily walk past those little tubs at the market now.

I’ll make my own.

Clean, creamy, useful, delicious—and yes, another small, beautiful thing.